Tails from the Crypt
Modern Budget Combo Hexproof Indestructible Midrange Pillow Fort RGW (Naya) Tokens
Land (24)
Creature (7)
Instant (15)
Artifact (4)
Enchantment (10)
Sideboard
Enchantment (8)
Sorcery (5)
Artifact (2)
Maybeboard
Enchantment (1)
NaNaNaNaNaNaNaNa, Batspam!
Of course we could run high priced Modern Selesnya staples like Temple Garden, Windswept Heath
or Horizon Canopy—but in the interests of keeping expenses down I opted for mana fixing of the bargain bin variety. The good news is you probably won’t notice. These lands perform rather well, all things considered.
•Forests and Plains in equal amounts provide much of our mana and also fulfill the prerequisites of a certain non-basic land.
•Brushland masquerades as a Savannah, but for about one one-thousandth of the price.
•Likewise, Fortified Village is another faux dual land, at the cost of revealing a card from our hand. A small price to pay when you realize that our hand will be public knowledge by Turn 3-4 anyway.
•I would be remiss not to mention Wild Cantor in this tab. While it is integral for our combo engine to function, we run a full four copies alongside a further 3 Chamber Sentry, so we should be fine once we’re ready to go. Feel free to take advantage of Wild Cantor to help field either Desecrated Tomb or Enduring Renewal earlier than expected.
Pillowforting our way to victory is probably our best bet. We don’t have the available card slots or the support structure to field a bunch of defensive creatures to absorb incoming damage, and we aren’t in the colors traditionally associated with control, direct damage or removal. Let’s take a look at our space cushions:
•Authority of the Consuls unties the other player’s shoe while we sprint ahead at the starting line. It ignores haste and the bump to our life total comes in handy in the event you already own playsets of fetch- and shocklands and wish to upgrade the mana base.
•Suppression Field severely slows down a great many plays an opponent may wish to utilize, either offensively or to bolster their own side. Ramp is unaffected of course, but with the preceding card in play ramp is somewhat crippled already. More importantly, we have no activated abilities of our own (besides Wild Cantor’s mana ability), thus we can fire this off with impunity.
•Since creatures will invariably find their way onto the battlefield despite our best efforts, Fog is here to stall the game further still, while we wait to draw into that card we may yet need.
•Once we start to cast the pieces of our combo engine, protecting them becomes top priority. This is made ever so slightly more difficult by the fact that our 3 piece combo consists of 3 different card types; an Enchantment, an Artifact and a Creature. Fortunately, there are a few ‘one size fits all’ protective spells. Heroic Intervention bestows temporary immortality on everything we own, while Tamiyo's Safekeeping produces the same result but for just one permanent. Both highly effective at staving off that dreaded ‘back to square one…’ feeling.
Heroic Intervention is by far the priciest card in the deck, so if budget is a concern you could try substituting it with Apostle's Blessing. It isn’t as good, and can’t cover our Enchantment, but it’s much less expensive.
The deck is surprisingly robust and defensible, but it does have an Achilles’ Heel. Two, actually. The first is any sort of graveyard sweeper; the second is from token boardwipes.
Effects like those created by Leyline of the Void, Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt or Rest in Peace are lethal and absolutely must be dealt with or it’s game over.
The same holds true for Illness in the Ranks or Virulent Plague.
•Enter: Nature's Claim, which hits all of the above. Always run a full four copies, without question. It isn’t perfect; there are relevant cards it can’t target, such as Bloodline Culling, but it punches well above its weight. Oh, it also smashes Urza's Saga too, and we all know how irritating that card can be…
And hate us they will; but that’s the point of sneaky combo decks.
Enduring Renewal is a grand old card, and there are nearly endless combos and interactions that are well known—everything from generating infinite storm counts to printing mana like a national bank.
But that mentality would be a ‘cart before the horse’ situation when it came to how I constructed this particular build. It actually began with wanting to design something around Desecrated Tomb. It seems like a card that would be easy to incorporate, but it proved problematic. To begin with, I naively assumed that simply filling my graveyard and Bojuka Bog’ing it out of existence would make oodles of tokens—not the case. One token is created for each instance of a card or card(s) leaving the graveyard, no matter how many leave at one time. What I needed was a way to get creatures flowing in and out in reciprocating fashion.
I experimented with a few different engines of sorts, each ending the same way: too much work, not enough payoff. Then browsing through older sets I stumbled upon Enduring Renewal and everything fell into place. Incidentally, as anyone following my activity on the site knows by now, I don’t net deck—and this extends to even reading up on well documented combos/interactions. I have nothing against those that do, it’s simply that I find it far more interesting to discover these things on my own. In researching the main combo of this deck to ensure it worked as I thought, I did come to learn Enduring Renewal has a whole host of recorded combos—but none I saw paired it with Desecrated Tomb so this one is fairly unique. Or more likely just a much, much worse variant! XD
If you aren’t aware, the combo functions like so: Desecrated Tomb is in play, and Enduring Renewal is cast. We then proceed to activate the mana ability of Wild Cantor, sacrificing it as part of the cost and thereby sending it to the graveyard. Enduring Renewal will send it back to our hand, and Desecrated Tomb will materialize a 1/1 bat token as its criteria has been met. We use the that’s still floating in the ether to recast the selfsame creature we just sacrificed, returning it to play—and now we’re ready to begin the loop again. When you create the desired amount of tokens, simply leave the creature in play and move on to the combat phase of your turn.
•Tanooki up during the early game, slowing things down with Suppression Field and Authority of the Consuls, warding off combat damage with Fog, and shielding your combo pieces with Heroic Intervention and Tamiyo's Safekeeping as necessary
•Cast Desecrated Tomb
•Cast Enduring Renewal
•Activate Wild Cantor’s mana ability or cast Chamber Sentry for , sending either to the graveyard. Enduring Renewal will return it to hand, Desecrated Tomb will create a token, and then begin the process again until you create a swarm of 1/1 flying bat tokens. Bury your opponent under a mountain of guano.
•Perhaps the greatest threat to our strategy is graveyard hate. A full playset of Leyline of Sanctity is available for games 2 and 3, as it’s all too easy in Modern’s current state to erase entire graveyards at the drop of a hat. This Enchantment will prevent any spell or ability that specifically targets our graveyard, but there isn’t a whole lot we can do to counter something like Relic of Progenitus other than attempting to blast it out of existence with artifact hate before it becomes a problem.
•Torpor Orb shuts down those pesky ETB centric decks, and won’t hinder us one bit. Neither Enduring Renewal nor Desecrated Tomb care about creatures entering the battlefield; it’s all about creatures leaving the graveyard.
•Nature's Spiral and Gaea's Blessing accomplish the same purpose in different ways. Both are a safeguard against mill, discard or removal in that they retrieve key pieces from our graveyard. Nature's Spiral grabs a specific card, whereas Gaea's Blessing may be cast to recycle specific target(s) back into our library, replacing itself with a draw. It also functions automatically, becoming triggered if it happens to get milled out.
•Stony Silence is here because of the horrendous amount of treasure tokens, blood tokens and other aggravating artifacts choking the format at the moment.
”’…My glory is constantly renewed, And the bow in my hand will keep shooting.’”
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91% Casual
Competitive
| Top Ranked |
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| Date added | 1 year |
| Last updated | 9 months |
| Legality | This deck is Modern legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 0 - 2 Mythic Rares 25 - 8 Rares 3 - 2 Uncommons 16 - 3 Commons |
| Cards | 60 |
| Avg. CMC | 1.64 |
| Tokens | Bat 1/1 B |
| Folders | Modern, Crazy decks that work, ideas, Modern |
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